Islamabad: As Pakistan urbanizes, the extended family - the joint household - is quietly shrinking, and the pace of that change looks different in every province.

Gallup Pakistan Digital Analytics tracked the share of Pakistani households living as extended families - parents, siblings, grandchildren, or in-laws sharing a home, not just a nuclear unit of parents and children - across four national surveys spanning 1990-91 to 2024-25.

The national trend is a real, if gradual, decline: from 44.5% of households in 1990-91 to 38.8% today.

What's more sociologically interesting is that this isn't one uniform national story. Sindh has consistently had the lowest share of extended households in every single survey since 1990, and that gap has only widened, now sitting at just 31.5%. KP, meanwhile, has held the highest share almost throughout the entire period, even as it too has drifted downward. Balochistan tells the sharpest story of change: it briefly led the country in extended-family living in 1990-91, only to see the fastest decline of any province since - down to 34.8% today, a steeper fall than anywhere else.

Looking at the four survey years, Balochistan shows the steepest overall decline in extended-household prevalence, falling from 49.3% to 34.8% - a drop of 14.5 percentage points, the largest of any province, and notably concentrated in the years since 2007-08 (43.5% to 34.8%, an 8.7-point fall in that window alone). Sindh shows the second-largest decline, from 38.7% to 31.5%, a drop of 7.2 percentage points. Punjab shows the smallest net change of any province, moving from 45.6% to 41.6% - a decline of just 4.0 percentage points, staying within a relatively narrow band across all four survey rounds rather than trending sharply in either direction. KP sits in between, falling from 47.7% to 44.9%, a decline of 2.8 percentage points.

None of this tells us whether the shift is good or bad for the people living through it - that's a much harder, more values-laden question than a household roster can answer.

A household was classified as 'extended' if it contained at least one member whose relationship to the household head was anything other than head, spouse, or son/daughter.

Gilani Research Foundation is a not-for-profit public service project to provide social science research to students, academia, policymakers, and concerned citizens in Pakistan and across the globe. Gilani Research Foundation is headed by Dr. Ijaz Shafi Gilani who pioneered the field of opinion polling in Pakistan and established Gallup Pakistan in 1980. Currently, Dr. Gilani, who holds a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has taught at leading universities in Pakistan and abroad, is Chairman of Gallup Pakistan.

Gallup Pakistan is not related to Gallup Inc. headquartered in Washington D.C. USA. We require that our surveys be credited fully as Gallup Pakistan (not Gallup or Gallup Poll). We disclaim any responsibility for surveys pertaining to Pakistani public opinion except those carried out by Gallup Pakistan, the Pakistani affiliate of Gallup International Association.